Dark Souls & 2011 Spike Video Game Awards this week!!

Hey everyone, not sure if you are aware but Dark Souls has made it through to the final round for best RPG of the year, at the prestigeous Spike Video Game Awards 2011. The voting pages can be found here:

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011-nominees/voting/best-rpg

However it's up against some tough competition: Skyrim, Dragon Age 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which you can now get for £10 on play.com.... not sure that'll be winning any awards!). So cast your vote for your favourite RPG of the year on the official Spike website and check out the winners this Saturday.

Don't forget to vote for the other categories which can be located on the left-hand side of the page. Bear in mind some of the nominees are console specific [or vice versa] so choose carefully.

Lets hope the best nominees win!

Priscilla's dagger guide

Today I'm going to write a guide on how to obtain Priscilla's dagger. Firstly you need to fight your way through the Painted World to the final room - which is accessed via the lower-bridge underneath the sleeping poison dragon. Once inside you will encounter Priscilla the Halfbreed, she looks like a giant white cat woman. To get the dagger you must successfully cut her tail off, though this can be tricky as its so small and she moves around quite a lot in addition to turning invisible.

Once you've thrown the first strike she will usually activate her invisibility spell, at this point you want to start moving around the arena as she will be trying to swing at you with her scythe which inflicts bleed damage. Keep moving around and trying to stay on the side with more snow on the floor as you will be able to see her footprints as she approaches you. When she's within range use some spells such as pyromancy (i.e. fire whip with a large AoE or just a standard fireball) to hit her. Within a few hits she will usually become visible, but be careful not to kill her by keeping a close eye on her health bar. Now try to circle around behind her to get a strike on her tail - you will see that its rather small but persist at it. Shes typically most vulnerable after she has done a power attack with her scythe and you will have plenty of time to get behind her and cut that tail off. Lock-on makes this more difficult as you cannot sprint so freely, so be sure to take this off temporarily before trying to circle around behind her. Once you successfully get the tail off you will see it appear on the floor as a shining drop - run over and grab it before finishing her.

Hope this helps and if you're still having difficult write a comment and I'll try to help out further :)

You will also receive Priscilla's soul at the end of the battle and receive an achievement/trophy. Unlike other boss souls Priscilla's soul can only be used to forge one unique weapon - the lifehunt scythe. This is an average weapon although it does have a high bleeding bonus (500 I think). Forge this using a +10 scythe, or if you don't have one a halberd +10.

The dagger itself appears to have quite good stats (including the 500 bleed bonus), however I didn't use it during my game. I think rogue classes would benefit from this weapon the most, as its arguably one of the strongest speed weapons in the game and has an excellent bleed effect.

New Version Update Live

The new update i outlined in my last post is now live. I just put dark souls in for the first time in a while (due to playing skyrim rather a lot recently) and loaded up one of my characters. Although it didn't actually prompt me for the update like it usually does with other games it should still be active. One easy way to check it to visit a bonfire and see whether the req. souls box is filled in. If you lack the required souls to level up then it will be highlighted red. If you remember before this box was left blank so this is an indication that your game has been updated.

NEW PATCH/UPDATE (v.1.04) FOR DARK SOULS!! - ***READ***

WOW! Well i just got back from my weekend away and found out some very exciting news - theres a new patch coming to dark souls which will resolve a number of issues such as balancing, drop rates, weapon damage; but perhaps most importantly of all - MULTIPLAYER!!

Update v.1.04 has been released in Japan already and will be coming to Europe and the USA "soon" according to a number of leading game sites. I've posted the full list of changes below, highlighted what i believe to be some major changes and written comments afterwards summing them up and how i think they will affect the game.


"Translated by Brett (twitch.tv/thebrett)

Taken from in-game testing / jp wiki notes (http://w.livedoor.jp/project_dark)


Magic Changes:

1. Pyro Glove nerfed from 270 to 230. - Oh well not too much of a big deal, only a slight change in power which can be made up for by improving your pyro glove at a trainer such as Quelana. 
2. You can see resonance signs now.
3. Vow of Silence range increased.
4. Homing Soul Mass and other pursuit style spells nerfed. - Not sure how much they will be nerfed by as it didn't give specific details but this kinda sucks as i was about to begin putting some serious hours into my sorcery character. Oh well, i guess the homing was kinda overpowered, let's hope its not too much of a big change! 
5. Magic Shield and Strong Magic Shield duration lowered.
6. Tranquil Walk of Peace and other Slow duration reduced to ~10 secs. Effect supposedly changed from 100% encumbrance to 50%.
7. Iron Flesh effectiveness nerfed. - Oh well, didn't use it much anyway but i did hear one of the major strategies for defeating the final boss entailed using this pyromancy spell... To be honest it slows you down SO much that i found it pretty useless.

Status Changes:

1. Initial weight increased
2. Humanity Item drop rate increased from 10 to 210 - WTF!!??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??! Well i knew humanity was a pretty rare drop from enemies but sheesh! this is gunna be crazy - its been multiplied by 21 times!!! This is a big change and will mean using humanity won't be nearly as much of a big deal. Brilliant change in my opinion, finally we'll be able to use some humanity to increase our item discovery rates whilst running around, and take part in the online community a bit more.
3. Medium roll recovery faster? (unclear and unconfirmed)

Equipment Changes:

1. Reported some weapon scaling gets improved at higher normal upgrades (+15 uchi dex scaling goes to A)
2. Some scaling reported as changing from A to S with higher upgrades
3. Normal upgrade path buffed by ~10%
4. Lightning path nerfed slightly (~5%) - Not enough of a nerf in my opinion, lightning weapons in this game are totally unscaled, their stats are far beyond that of all the other elements, essentially rendering things like fire or crystal useless. Meh.
5. Grant scaling changed?
6. Gold-hemmed nerfed, still un-upgraded
7. Dust skirt nerfed hard
8. Silver Knights, Sun, Hollow Soldier’s Shield and other medium shield stability nerfed to ~70 at max upgrades to improve Great Shield viability.
9. Crystal Ring Shield scaling drastically nerfed. Does around ~200 +-50 - OH SNAP! I was just getting used to my 700s with the Captain America shield! Oh well, it had to be coming, that thing was a total weapon of mass destruction and definitely unscaled. Will still be useful but you'll have to do a bit more close quarters fighting too now... not much of a big deal really (?).
10. Dragon Greatsword buffed from 360 to 390.

Combat Changes:

1. Lock-on acquisition range increased.
2. Lock-on changing/switching got easier.
3. Ring of Fog users can now be locked on. - HAHA! suck it noobs. No more invaders who are invisible and can't be locked on. They'll take their punishment now.

PVE Changes:

1. Damage reduced on some mobs?
2. HP lowered on some mobs?
3. Bosses drop Humanity and Homeward Bones
4. Ghosts and Skeletons give souls now. - sweet!
5. Twinkling Titanite drop rate improved. - sweeter!
6. Some mobs may have added drops (Pyromancer dropping Lantern? Unconfirmed).

Online Changes:

1. You can see resonance signs.
2. Some invasion restrictions possibly changed? Darkwraith upperlimit confirmed as unchanged.
3. Amount of souls the Master of the game gains changed.
4. Cracked Eye Orbs no longer get consumed on failure. Confirmed

Other Changes:

1. Official Guide nerfed.
2. Lowered requirements for Sunbro covenenant (requirements moved from 50 to 25. 3/4 assists should do the trick) - MASSIVE CHANGE! finally its viable to join the warrior of sunlight covenant without having to have a ridiculously high faith stat of 50! This means that with the minimum starting faith stat of 8, you can help only a few people online as a white phantom to defeat their area boss and solaire will let you in!! This is excellent news for people looking to get that achievement(/trophy), and also getting all the miracle spells. Note that you'll still need to donate 10 medals of sunlight to get all the miracles from this covenant though AND the soul of the final boss (thats right new game + unfortunately).
3. Fixed some freeze issues.
4. Lvl up screen displays souls needed properly now.
5. Dragon-head glitch, snuggly, and magic shield glitches fixed. - suck it noobs! no more soul glitching to reach level 1,000,000. Didn't know there was a snuggly glitch but whatever! fixing any glitches has to be a good thing, and forces those mugs to go through the same pain as the rest of us hard working dark soulers!!
6. Fixed a bug where your inputs come out 1 second later. - Not sure if you guys noticed this during combat but i certainly did! This could definitely provide you with an extra edge during a close fight!
7. Fixed a bug where the second solaire event wont progress.
8. Fixed a bug where feeding frampt a titanite stone then going over 99 resulted in having zero.
9. Fixed some specific map areas where you’d get stuck or be unable to progress.
10. Changed some english subtitles on the overseas port.

Merchant stock updates:

1. Male Undead Merchant: Also sells bottomless box.
2. Female Undead Merchant: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts.
3. Andrei: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts.
4. Domnhal of Xena: Sells Arrows / Crossbolts, Master Key - WOW! no longer do you have to start the game with the master key as a perk!!! its now available to everyone (for a price no doubt) from Xena, in case you didn't know this is the Welsh merchant who can first be found in front of the door in the depths to blighttown, OR later near firelink shrine sitting next to the skeleton which had the ring of sacrafice on it at the bottom of the aquaduct that leads to undead burg.
5. iant Blacksmith (Fapsmith): Sells Arrows / Crossbolts, Small Titanite Shards, Large Tit Shards, Twinkling (8000 per, inf amount), Green Shards, Repair box, upgrade boxes - Sweet Jesus this is good news!! i spent hours farming for this stuff!! Although its 8k each thats not such a big deal, i dont mind paying that amount as the clam farming methods took a LOT longer. This means we can finally upgrade our gear which requires twinkling titanite without too much concern.
6. amos: Arrows / Crossbolts, Small Tit, Large tit, Repair box / upgrade boxes.
7. Ingwood: Sells Transient Curses."

(Source: http://trendygamers.com/2011/11/02/dark-souls-patch-1-04-information/)


As you can see this is quite a substantial update and will bring some significant changes to the offline and online game. Although not all of the multiplayer improvements have been listed here there are undoubtedly a number of background changes they will be making. More specifically - we shouldn't experience so much difficulty in finding a world to invade or summoning players to help defeat area bosses (or vice versa).


Thanks for reading everyone as always and i'd like to say thanks to Lee for recently filling me in on some of the storyline i previously didn't understand, as some of you may know i have been playing the game for around 110 hours now and am still learning some of the basics haha!


Peace.

Hidden fire keeper soul - New Londo Ruins

Hey everyone as i just came accross this fire keeper soul in my NG+ i thought it would be cool to share it with you all in case you missed it.

As you're coming into New Londo Ruins you will cross two narrow wooden bridges. Be sure to have some transient curses before you go across both bridges as you will encounter ghosts and won't be able to hurt them without using a transient curse. You can find two of these by looting a corpse inside a large jug before you cross the first bridge (near two sitting undead), from the witch merchant in the aqueduct near Firelink Shrine, or occasionally dropped by the ghosts themselves.

Once you've crossed both bridges turn right and then work your way into the bottom right corner of the first area. You will see the fire keeper soul shining on a corpse across a stretch of water. The way to get to it is by crossing a narrow bit of bridge under the water. You will know when you're in the right place as the shining corpse will be directly in front of you and you'll have to go underneath an archway.

BEWARE - when you cross the narrow bridge a ghost will appear behind you and two more in front of you. You can turn around and make your way back into the open area to fight them as this is easier but be careful not to fall off the bridge when trying to get around the ghost which spawns behind you!

Good luck and enjoy another estus upgrade!